Edward Jones - All Aunt Hagar's Children

“Alona’s decided to go on to Howard, go to college,” Miss Agatha said.

“Mama’s always bragging on whatever I do.”

“You deserve braggin on, child,” Miss Agatha said. “You know how much I believe in you, honey.” She said to me, “Alona’s my future.”

“Whatcha gonna be takin up?” I said, the way my mother would.

“I haven’t decided,” she said, and she looked a bit dreamy-like, like a man thinking about all the gold in his pockets. “I’ll decide down the road. Won’t I, sweetums? Won’t I, sweetums?” She stood the child up on her lap and kissed her face until she collapsed in laughter. After a bit, the child got down from Alona’s lap and scurried off to the living room. Alona stood up. “Have some more pie,” she said. “It was as good as usual, Mama,” and she put her arms around Miss Agatha and kissed her cheek and left.

“I don’t know what I would do without her,” Miss Agatha said. “Son, you find somethin down there?” She pointed her index finger down.

“I can’t say, ma’am, cause I’m just startin out. But I plan to keep on it. Don’t worry bout that.”

“He was into some things I would never appreciate, I have to tell you.” I nodded. “But towards the end I think he was tryin to get hisself together. Tryin to make things right with Alona, with the baby comin and all, you know. I’m sure it woulda been a new day for him.” She swept a few crumbs from the table into her hand and then brushed them with the other hand into her empty coffee cup. Watching the crumbs fall, I wanted to do the very best I could for her. “You might hear some bad things bout Ike. I can’t testify to that. People tend not to lie bout a dead man, so I can’t testify to anything they say. All I can say is that even if he was the Devil hisself, he was still mine. I gave him life.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I got up and took my plate and fork to the sink, the way I had been taught. I ran hot water onto the plate. “I’d best get on, Miss Agatha, but I’ll be back workin on things tomorrow.”

“Maybe you shouldna been workin today, on the Lord’s day. God might not appreciate it.”

I went home to clean up before going to my mother’s for Sunday supper. Every Sunday since I had finished high school and gone out on my own, my mother had made a big fried-chicken supper for herself, my brother, and me, usually with string beans, potatoes boiled with a bit of fatback, and corn bread with crackling. An apple or peach cobbler. Every other Sunday I got to choose the Kool-Aid, and I almost always picked grape. Freddy was a lime man. After Freddy married, his wife came, too, of course, so I got to enjoy my grape Kool-Aid only every third week. Joanne was into orange Kool-Aid, which I hated. A punk flavor. God only knew what shit their twin girls would choose, but I had no plans to be around when those two started showing up and spoiling everything and putting my choice of Kool-Aid off to the fifth or sixth week. Gold could buy grape Kool-Aid every day of a man’s life. My mother had never commanded that we be there each Sunday at six. It was simply in her sons’ blood to know to show up. I suspect that if the Korean War had been fought as close as Maryland or Pennsylvania, my blood would have sent me to her every Sunday.

Afraid I would see Sheila Larkin, I took the long way—down 4th Street, then along New York Avenue to 6th Street. Afraid of lye in my face. I felt bad about her, but she wasn’t in my future.

I sat on my bed in the upstairs back room and drank the last of some whiskey a friend had given me, listening to WOOK all the while. On Sundays WOOK was full of religious shit, and it always depressed the hell out of me. But I didn’t change the station. A moll is gav vain ah rav und ah rabbit sin . I put some water in the empty bottle to get the last of the juice out of it. Then I took out the booklet on Alaska and turned to page six, the one with “little known facts about our northern neighbor.” Alaska was not even a state. Zetcha kender lock, gadank za tira vos ear lair rent doe .

About a week before Sam Jaffe went to Israel, I was on the streetcar headed down New Jersey Avenue to see a friend in Northeast when I decided to get off and visit Aunt Penny and her husband, on 3rd Street. My car was acting hincty, so I had put it in the Ridge Street garage. Three women preceded me off the streetcar at L Street. One of them was a white woman. The first two women went on across the street to the sidewalk, but just as I was about to step down from the streetcar the white woman turned and held her arm out to me. I thought she wanted to get back on the car. I stepped down and to the side to make way. She was less than three feet from me. She took two steps toward me and began to collapse, her arm still out to me.

I heard her say, “A moll is gav vain ah rev und ah rabbit sin.”

I got to her before her head hit the ground.

She said, “Zetcha kender lock, gadank za tira vos ear lair rent doe.”

Her head was covered with a gray woollen scarf, which was much too heavy for a warm day. I could see that beneath the scarf there was a wig. I thought, If we can keep her wig in place, just the way it was when she walked out her front door, everything will be fine. Her dark blue dress came down to her ankles. She was far too young for the old-lady black shoes she had on. I lowered her head to the ground, and just as I did, she closed her eyes. I looked around for someone to help, but no one came. I kept thinking, Where in the world is that streetcar conductor? Where the hell is that man? Isn’t this his job? And then, seeing the stopped streetcar gleaming in the sun, I thought, Green and off-white are perfect colors for a streetcar. The woman struggled with each breath. I could see several colored women looking out the streetcar windows at me and the white woman.

I tilted her head back and tried to give her breath, the way the army had taught me. My mother had always told my brother and me that if she ever caught us kissing a white woman she would cut off our lips. “You ever try coolin soup with no lips? Try it and see. It won’t work. That soup will never cool and you’ll starve to death.”

For a long time, I tried to help the woman, but I began to see that only the breath of God could help her. Would that white streetcar conductor show up and think that I was trying something untoward? Would he try to kill me for doing the right thing? Try coolin that tomato soup yall love with no lips. Try it and see what it gets you boys. Three of the colored women on the streetcar came to us and knelt down. One caressed the white woman’s cheek. “It’s all right, son,” the colored woman said. I saw then that the white woman was dead. “You done your best. At least you walked with her all the rest a the way.” In the end, I laid the white woman’s head down on the ground, but a human head on metal tracks and concrete in the middle of a city street seemed so out of place that I put my hand under her head again. By and by, the dead woman let go of my other hand and one of the colored women soon put her own hand under her head where mine had been.

Another of the women took a new sweater with the tag still on it out of a Hecht’s bag and put it under the white woman’s head. I stood up. Traffic up and down New Jersey Avenue had stopped, and on any other day that would have been something to see. I went to the sidewalk and then I turned and went down L Street toward Northeast, which wasn’t the way to my aunt’s. Eventually, after a long time, I found my way to my mother’s house. She fixed me something to eat, and though I didn’t tell her about the white woman she saw how the hot food just went cold lying on the plate and said I should sleep at her place that night. I said I would go on home, but my mother said I would do no such thing.